Bio

Jaap Kooijman is an associate professor in Media Studies and American Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His articles on American pop culture and politics have been published in journals such as The Velvet Light Trap, European Journal of Cultural Studies, The Journal of American Culture, Post Script, Journal of International Education, Presidential Studies Quaterly, GLQ, Celebrity Studies, and Thamyris, as well as in essay collections published by NYU Press, UP of Mississippi, Routledge, Ashgate, Amsterdam UP, Edinbourgh UP, Wallflower Press, and UP of Kentucky. He is the author of Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture (AUP 2008), for which he won the 2009 ASCA Book Award. A second - extended and revised - edition was published in 2013. Together with Patricia Pisters and Wanda Strauven, he has edited the collection Mind the Screen (AUP 2008). Kooijman is associate editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies and co-founding editor of NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies.

Fabricating the Absolute Fake

The pageantry of Oprah Winfrey's daytime talk show, the
Coca-Cola empire, Michael Jackson's turn from the King of Pop
into an iconic global recluse: American pop culture - Hollywood
cinema, television, pop music - dominates the rest of the world
through its hegemonic presence. Does that make everyone a
hybridized American, or do these elements find mediation within
the other cultures that consume them?

Fabricating the Absolute Fake applies concepts of
postmodern theory - Baudrillard's hyperreality and Eco's
"absolute fake," among others - to this globally mediated
American pop culture in order to examine both the phenomenon
itself and its appropriation in the Netherlands, as evidenced
by such diverse cultural icons as the Elvis-inspired crooner
Lee Towers, the Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, musical tributes
to an assassinated politician, and the Dutch reality soap opera
scene. A fascinating exploration of how global cultures
struggle to create their own " America " within a post-9/11
media culture, Fabricating the Absolute Fake reflects
on what it might mean to truly take part in American pop
culture.

A brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable work of cultural
critique, Fabricating the Absolute Fake takes
seemingly exhausted concepts like "Americanization" and turns
them on their head. Refusing simple binaries between the fake
and the authentic, or between cultural imperialism and native
resistance, Kooijman demonstrates just how flexible the
signifiers of Americanness can be when they circulate
globally. Anna McCarthy, Cinema Studies, New York University

Most daring and persuasive is Kooijman's ability to move
between and connectthe most delicious pop and the most searing
political events (9/11, the murder of Pim Fortuyn),never
evading the seriousness of entertainment nor the spectacle of
politics. A book that is a pleasure for what it conveys of its
subject and for its intellectual rigor, managing to be at once
subtle and straightforward, complex and lucid. Richard Dyer, Film Studies, King's College London

This book will be an eye opener for its readers.
Fabricating the Absolute Fake shows that pop culture is
more than ephemeral entertainment. When looked at with
Kooijman's cosmopolitan eye, pop culture can be seen as a
continuing ritual in celebration of national identities,
America 's identity for sure, but also, intriguingly, a Dutch
or even European sense of self. Rob Kroes, American Studies, University of Amsterdam

Jaap Kooijman, "'Ain't No Mountain High Enough': Diana
Ross as American Pop-Cultural Icon of the 1960s," in
AvitalBloch and Lauri Umansky (editors), Impossible to
Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s , New York: New
York University Press, 2005: 152-173.

Jaap Kooijman, "Triumphant Black Pop Divas on the Wide
Screen: Lady Sings The Blues and Tina: What's
Love Got To Do With It ," in Ian Inglis (editor),
Popular Music and Film , London / New York:
Wallflower Press, 2003: 178-192.

Jaap Kooijman, "A Juxtaposition of Conflicting Images:
Hubert H. Humphrey and the Television Coverage of Chicago
1968," in Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor (editors),
Hollywood's White House: The American Presidency in Film
and History , Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
2003: 225-240.

Jaap Kooijman, "Licked By a Groupof Doctors: The
Exclusion of a National Health Insurance Program from the
Social Security Act of 1935," in Hans Bak, Frits van
Holthoon, and Hans Krabbendam (editors), Social and
Secure? Politics and Culture of the Welfare State: A
Comparative Inquiry, Amsterdam Free University Press,
1996: 129-145.

2012

Kooijman, J. (2012). Dreaming the American Nightmare: The Cultural Life of 9/11. In C. Meiner, & K. Veel (Eds.), The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises (pp. 177-190). (Concepts for the study of culture; No. 3). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. [details]

2009

Kooijman, J. (2009). Are we all Americans? 9/11 and discourses of multiculturalism in the Netherlands. In D. Rubin, & J. Verheul (Eds.), American multiculturalism after 9/11: transatlantic perspectives (pp. 181-190). (New debates in American studies). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [details]

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